


Strange Beings

by Joanne_Lupin



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Ghosts, Side Holsom (very brief), Side Nurseydex (blink-and-you-miss-it)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 18:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11766024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_Lupin/pseuds/Joanne_Lupin
Summary: What a strange being you are.God knows where I would beIf you hadn't found meSitting all alone in the dark.-Dodie, "Sick of Losing Soulmates"--Catching feelings is hard enough. Catching feelings for the only person in the world who can see or talk to you?That really, really sucks.





	Strange Beings

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [thequeerkhaleesi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeerkhaleesi/pseuds/thequeerkhaleesi) in the [OMGCP_Heartbreak_Fest_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/OMGCP_Heartbreak_Fest_2017) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Characters/Pairings: Jenny/Mandy  
> Prompt Details: How they have fallen in love throughout the years but cannot physically touch each other and are not sure how to bring it up.  
> Additional Info: Can contain cameos of current and former SMH team members but should focus in them. Should be maybe not a happy ending up not a sad ending either. Semi-sweet with some angst please  
> Maximum Rating: Teen
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely [chocolatechipcookiesplease](http://chocolatechipcookiesplease.tumblr.com/)

**1993**

If Jenny had had a heart, it would have stopped when she locked eyes with the girl who was floating next to her on the sorority house lawn. 

“ _Heller?_ ” she gasped. 

“I know you,” Heller replied. “We’re in softball together-- number 9, right? And we were both rushing, and… Oh.” She glanced over to the house. There was a sheet of plywood covering a hole in the attic wall, and their portraits sat on the front steps, surrounded by candles and flowers. “We died, didn’t we?”

“I… Yeah, I think so. Um… I’m sorry…”

“Me too.” 

Not knowing what more she could say, Jenny settled for studying their memorials a bit more closely. With a bit of practice, she was able to move herself across the lawn to the house’s front steps.

_Jennifer Uyeda_  
_November 3, 1974-_  
_September 18, 1993_

_Miranda Heller_  
_October 14, 1974-_  
_September 18, 1993_

“Ugh,” Heller muttered. 

“What’s up?”

“Okay, so like, I know this is a touching gesture and whatever, but… did they have to use _that_ picture?”

Jenny couldn’t help but giggle. “I think it looks nice. But I, like, know what you mean. Literally the only person who calls me ‘Jennifer’ is my mom, when she’s pissed.” (It hit her that she’d never hear her mother call her “Jennifer” again. She pushed the thought away.)

“Ooh, yeah, that’s another thing! I’ve gone by Mandy since, like, second grade.”

“Ha, I go by Jenny. We’re like the dolls.”

“Dolls?”

“There are, like, these two dolls that are in, like, the same series or something? The first two are named Mandy and Jenny.”

“Oh. Weird.”

Jenny winced. _Crap, she thinks I’m crazy into dolls now, doesn’t she?_ She rushed to add, “I just know that because my mom got me one when I was a kid.”

“Which one?” Mandy asked.

“Jenny. Cuz my name’s Jenny. So… yeah…”

“Cool.” Mandy looked up at the hole in the wall. “I wanna look around. You in?”

“Um, okay.” 

Jenny let Mandy take the lead as they entered the sorority house. It was completely deserted. Plastic cups and other party-related garbage littered the floor, but it appeared that everyone’s important belongings had been removed. Someone had even taken the curtains off the windows. Though Jenny was pretty sure they were able to float through the ceiling, she followed Mandy up the stairway to the second floor, and then to the attic. 

Though someone had apparently been kind enough to patch up the hole in the wall, there was still a fair bit of debris inside the house that hadn’t been cleaned up. There were scorch marks on the floor, as well, and muddy tracks that seemed to belong to some sort of large animal. 

“What the hell happened?” Jenny muttered.

“Honestly? I don’t really remember…”

“Me neither. But it looks like we went out with a bang.”

Mandy shot her a grin that left Jenny the ghostly equivalent of breathless. 

“C’mon, let’s see if we can find anyone else,” Mandy said. She reached out to grab Jenny’s arm, but she phased right through. Jenny felt nothing.

“Oh,” Jenny murmured.

“Well, that sucks,” Mandy said. “Let’s go.”

Jenny watched as Mandy floated straight through the hole in the wall. She held back.

-o0o-

_Jenny had easily been the fastest runner on her high school softball team. The cross country coaches had begged her, multiple times, to join them, but she always politely declined. Though she was good at it, running for running’s sake bored her. She was much happier chasing after a fly ball or racing to home plate._

_Jenny expected college athletics to be a bit more difficult than high school. She did not expect to be immediately outpaced by another freshman during their fall conditioning check._

_Jenny was determined to keep pace with this girl-- Heller, number 13, according to her team T-shirt-- until the finish line. But while Jenny was struggling to keep up, Heller hardly broke a sweat. Jenny knew she shouldn’t be outdoing herself, since this run would establish her baseline time for the next four years, but she_ had _to keep up, even if it killed her._

_She would not let this challenger defeat her so soon._

_Heller beat her to the finish line by a matter of steps. ”Great times, Heller, Uyeda,” Coach Mathers praised._

_”Thanks, Coach,” Heller said, while Jenny could only nod through labored breaths. Heller turned, beaming, reaching out to shake Jenny’s hand. “Great job, girl! I don’t usually have anyone following me so closely!” She laughed._

_From that moment on, Jenny knew she was screwed._

-o0o-

“Dammit!” Mandy cried. She turned, looking for her new companion, and was surprised to see her just exiting the house.

“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked.

“I keep trying to leave, but I just, like… can’t!” Mandy pushed forward, and once again found herself stuck at the edge of the sorority house lawn; she couldn’t feel any force holding her back-- she just _stopped_. She let out another frustrated scream. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jenny soothed. “Did you try the whole yard?”

“No,” Mandy admitted. She tried floating to the right a bit, but still couldn’t move an inch forward. She huffed.

“Okay… Why don’t you keep going that way, and I’ll go the other way. We can see if there’s any way out of here.”

Mandy nodded. “Good idea.”

Unfortunately, they couldn’t find a gap in the perimeter at ground level, nor anywhere in the air-- in fact, they could only float about ten feet above the roof of the house before they were stopped.

“No, no, no…” Mandy groaned. She threw herself at the invisible barrier over and over, begging it to break. “This isn’t it! There’s gotta be a way out!” She sobbed, pushing toward the street with everything she had in her incorporeal form. “I’m not stuck here! _I can’t be stuck here!_ ”

To her credit, Jenny let Mandy cry herself out before intervening, though she did look a little hurt.

“It’s okay,” Jenny cooed when Mandy had quieted down. “It’ll be okay. We can have fun here. Someone’s gonna come back here soon. Maybe we can haunt them!”

“No one’s coming back,” Mandy said bitterly. “You saw how everything was gone. They all moved. We’re alone.”

“That just means we have the whole place to ourselves!” Jenny replied. “And the lacrosse team lives right across the street. We can, like, spy on them and stuff.”

Mandy had to smile at that. “You know, I heard they’re all named Chad. I think it’s, like, a requirement to get on the team.” 

“Hell, it’ll take us a good two decades just to figure out how to tell all these Chads apart.”

Mandy laughed, watching a leaf roll across the LAX team’s lawn. “I’m sorry for freaking out.”

“Don’t be, girl. We’re, like, dead. It’s understandable.”

“I guess…” Mandy sighed. “You know, I’d never left Wyoming before I came here. And, like, it’s a big state, but still. I spent most of it in one little town. And then I came to Samwell, and I was so excited to be somewhere new. And now…”

“Now you’re stuck again.”

“Yeah.”

“I know what that’s like,” Jenny said. “To be stuck. Not physically, but… yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah…”

Mandy was surprised when Jenny didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t bother to push it further. 

After all, it seemed they had plenty of time.

 

**1994**

“Is that Chad R. or Chad Y.?” Jenny asked, peering at the red-haired lacrosse player and his tall, blonde girlfriend.

“That’s Chad H., duh. Chad R. is dating Linda E., and Chad Y. is dating Linda P. That’s Linda G.”

“Oh, right. How are you so good at this? All these white people look the same to me.”

Mandy shrugged, laughing. “Give it time, I guess.”

“Whatever. Guess what-- I moved a pen today!” 

“Oooh, scary. Our future haunt-ee will be, like, so freaked out.”

Jenny crossed her arms. “And what have _you_ moved, Miss Chad-X-Y-Z?”

“Nothing, but check this out.” Mandy tilted her head back and let out a piercing, high-pitched scream. The Chads on the lawn all jumped.

Jenny nearly started crying. “Oh my God, Mands, that’s hilarious!”

“I think Chad L. peed!”

They laughed, and the words Jenny thought every day teetered on the tip of her tongue. She swallowed them back down, but she couldn’t quite ignore them:

_God, I’m so in love with you._

 

**2003**

People were starting to enter their house again. Mandy was ecstatic, but Jenny didn’t like that she might have to share Mandy’s attentions. They were near-pros at haunting now, and they used their skills to freak out the realtors and refurbishers who came by. The only one who wasn’t frightened was the new owner of their home, a man by the name of Jonathan. (Jenny swore he looked right at her at one point.)

The workers got the house just past the bar of “livable” before the new occupants arrived. They brought with them hockey sticks and skates, as well as frankly enviable butts. 

“Hmm, I could, like, totally get used to this,” Mandy said, floating near one player at exactly ass-height. “Let’s not scare ‘em off right away.”

“Oh, yeah, like, look at those butts…” Jenny added lamely. 

“I mean, like, we can haunt them a _little,_ but let’s not break out the big guns just yet.”

“Okay. Maybe we should just throw them a little welcome party…” Jenny floated over to the radio. With a single touch, it sprung to life:

“ _What is love?_  
_Baby don’t hurt me,_  
_Don’t hurt me_  
_No more.”_

Mandy cackled when the hockey player next to her startled, sending his butt phasing right through her face.

“Dude, who turned on the radio?” he called to the rest of the house.

“Not me, bro!”

“Nope!”

“I didn’t!”

“What the hell,” the player muttered to himself, switching the radio off.

“Well, that wasn’t very nice,” Jenny pouted.

“Maybe he just doesn’t like your music,” Mandy teased. She touched the radio.

“ _I don't care if Monday's blue_  
_Tuesday's gray and Wednesday too_  
_Thursday I don't care about you_  
_It's Friday I'm in love…”_

“No way,” the hockey player said. Then, loud enough for the whole house to hear, he shouted, “Whatever’s messing with the radio… Could you play some Britney?”

“Seriously? Bro!”

“What? She’s an icon!”

“No, I mean,” another player said as he sidled into the room, “you’re really buying that this place is, like, haunted or whatever?”

Player Number One shrugged. “Johnson told us to expect some creepy stuff, right? I’ll be okay with it as long as they play nice.”

Mandy immediately touched the radio:

“ _Oops, I did it again,_  
_I played with your heart,_  
_Got lost in the game,_  
_Oh, baby, baby…”_

“Excellent,” Hockey Player Number One said.

Hockey Player Number Two looked around. “Creepy, dude. Real creepy…”

Mandy and Jenny just laughed.

 

**2013**

Every so often, Mandy developed an infatuation with a certain player in the Haus. These always left Jenny a little miffed, but the one consolation was that they never lasted very long. 

But this new infatuation was starting to make Jenny concerned.

His name was Ransom, and Jenny had to admit, at least from an aesthetic standpoint, that he was attractive. The fact that he was almost never seen without his friend Holster didn’t seem to deter Mandy a bit.

The two stopped by the Haus often enough that Jenny was certain they’d get dibs. Sure enough, they wound up sharing the attic bedroom. Mandy was delighted.

“I’ll get to look at him, like, all the time, now! Isn’t that great!” Mandy gushed while they watched Ransom and Holster scope out the attic at the end of their freshman year. 

“Totally!” Jenny replied with forced enthusiasm. 

“We’re gonna haunt the _crap_ outta him!”

“What do you have in mind?”

Mandy grinned impishly. “Watch this…”

She floated directly in Ransom’s path, and giggled when he passed through her, making him shiver.

“Bro, is it drafty in here?”

Holster shook his head. “I didn’t feel anything, did you?”

Ransom frowned, glancing around. “Maybe I was just imagining it…”

“Probably.”

“Oooh, you know what’ll, like, really mess with him now?” Jenny asked. Without waiting for an answer, she brushed her fingers against Ransom’s butt. She had to admit, it was fun to creep him out, and that would certainly do the trick.

“Bro!” Ransom shouted, jumping forward.

Holster cocked his head. “What, bro?”

“Did you just… touch my butt?”

“Dude, no. After that lecture Shitty gave us about consent, I’d never touch without asking.” Holster looked almost insulted, while Ransom was getting more freaked out by the moment.

“M-maybe we don’t wanna live here after all, bro…”

“Dude, after all the back rubs I’ve given? We’re living here till we die.”

Jenny thought this was hilarious, but Mandy seemed oddly unamused.

“You okay, Mands?” Jenny asked when she’d mostly calmed down from her own giggle fit.

“What?” Mandy looked up at her, her eyes almost foggy. “Oh, I’m, like, fine.”

“You sure?”

Mandy shook herself. “Yeah, yeah. I… yeah.” She glanced back at the pair of hockey players, who were now arguing about something to do with dibs. “I think I wanna try that.”

Jenny’s heart wrenched slightly when she realized what Mandy was about to do, but she pulled herself together, concentrating on the fun they could have tormenting this poor soul.

Ransom shrieked when he felt Mandy’s fingers on his butt. “Oh my God, bro, I know that wasn’t you, I can see your hands. This place is _definitely_ haunted.”

Mandy and Jenny dissolved into fits of giggles. 

-o0o-

There were so many times Jenny could have told her.

There was that first night, when she’d almost said it. There were countless nights after, when they’d spilled secret after secret until they’d shared nearly their whole life stories. There were the times when it had threatened to come bursting out of her, pushing against her lips until she was practically holding her breath to keep it from escaping. (Not that she really needed to breathe, anyway.)

But she was quiet every time.

There were too many risks. She’d heard the jokes her old teammates had shared in the locker room; they spouted such hateful things for girls who told each other they had each other’s backs before every game. And even if Mandy was okay with it, there were so many ways her feelings could ruin things. That was such a terrifying prospect, to isolate yourself from literally the only other person in the entire world you can talk to.

Jenny wasn’t happy, but it was certainly better this way.

-o0o-

They couldn’t really _feel_ the things they touched. Even so, seeing Jenny touch someone else threw Mandy for a loop. The jealousy reared up before she could stop it. It frightened her; she’d never felt anything like it.

Was that what Jenny felt every time Mandy found a crush? She’d never had to think about jealousy before, knowing there wouldn’t be many girls in their house for Jenny to fall for. 

But what could she do about it? If she told her, what would change? They’d still haunt the same tiny patch of land they’d always haunted, only able to talk to each other, but never able to touch. The only difference would be that, whenever Mandy had the urge to hold Jenny’s hand, to kiss her, to hold her so tight she’d never feel cold and alone again, there’d be nothing to stop her besides the fact that she literally couldn’t.

So Mandy pushed the jealousy back where it came from and let herself have a silly crush on a pretty boy. She pushed away when her feelings got too intense. Before she knew it, she’d let this boy become a buffer between the two of them, but she wasn’t about to stop it.

It was certainly better this way.

 

**2016**

The bright side was that Jenny suspected no other lesbian in history had been able to terrorize the object of their straight crush’s affection as much as she’d been able to terrorize Ransom. (Her favorite move was hiding his jock strap-- it was such an awkward thing to lose, and she could return it to the most obvious places, making the poor guy think he was losing his mind every time.) 

That said, Jenny was relieved that Ransom would soon be graduating. It seemed like she and Mandy were drifting apart as of late, and Jenny was certain Ransom was to blame. 

Jenny was on cloud nine, counting down the days until Ransom’s departure, until--

“So, who do you like more-- Dex or Nursey?” 

“What?” Jenny asked, freezing in midair, two feet above the reading room.

“Like, I love Nursey’s tattoo, and his eyes are, like, beautiful, but Dex has those _muscles_ , and, like, he can totally fix things, which is cool…”

“I… I don’t… I thought…” Jenny felt like her brain was broken. “You mean… like, to replace Ransom?”

“Uh, _duh,_ ” Mandy replied airily. “Wasn’t it fun, focusing on one guy like that?”

“I… guess?”

“C’mon! I mean, I know you didn’t like it as much as I did, but I saw you getting a kick out of it…”

Jenny felt like she’d been hit with a bucket of ice water. “What do you mean?”

“Mean by what?” Mandy asked, although regret showed clearly on her face. 

“All this time, I was so scared what would happen if I told you, and you just _knew_?”

“Knew what?” Mandy said measuredly.

Jenny started to cry. “I’ve never said it out loud before, even to my parents, and you could just _tell_ ,” she muttered.

“Jen…” Mandy made a move to reach out to her, but stopped herself. “It’s only because I know what to look for.”

“You’re--” Jenny gaped.

“Bisexual,” Mandy finished. “I… I never heard that word until after I died, but I think that’s what I am.”

“You’re bisexual,” Jenny repeated. “And I’m gay. I’m gay, Mands.”

Mandy smiled. “Thank you for trusting me with that information.”

Jenny had to laugh. For someone who was weightless, that secret sure had been keeping her down. “That was… _so_ not as hard as I thought it’d be.”

“I’m sorry, girl. I figured you had your reasons.”

“You’re good, Mands.”

Mandy floated lazily to Jenny’s side. “You know, I’m betting we’ll see that new manager around here quite a bit. She could be our next target.”

Jenny’s good mood evaporated immediately. “Oh. Uh, well… Do _you_ like her?”

“Yeah, I mean, like, look at her, she’s adorable,” Mandy replied with a roll of her eyes. “But it should be your turn to pick. Who do you like?”

 _You,_ Jenny’s brain helpfully supplied. “Why don’t we just haunt the whole Haus, like we used to?”

“Cuz this is funner,” Mandy said, an edge to her voice.

“Well, what if I don’t agree?”

Mandy snapped, nearly shrieking, “Just pick someone!”

“ _Why?_ ” Jenny shouted back. “Why are you avoiding me?” Mandy opened her mouth to respond, but now that Jenny had gotten started, she couldn’t seem to stop. “I know you are, Mands, don’t deny it! Ever since you started this whole crush thing, it’s been ‘Ransom this’ and ‘Ransom that’! We hardly ever talk the way we used to, and that really sucks, because you’re _literally the only person I can talk to._ And I feel so fucking lonely, Mands, so you better start telling me _why._ ”

Jenny regretted raising her voice once Mandy started crying, but she’d said what had to be said. 

“This whole thing just sucks,” Mandy whimpered after a moment. “Why’d we have to die? Why’d we have to come back like this? It just, like... it really sucks.”

“Yeah… Yeah, it does.”

They floated together in the reading room, watching as the sky around them turned red. 

“There were so many things I wanted to do, Jen. And I’ve gotten so good at ignoring them, most of the time. But then we’d be sitting out here, and it’d be so beautiful out, just like this… and all I could think about is how much I wanted to hold your hand.”

After all the intense emotions they’d shared today, Jenny was too wiped out to feel shocked. “You really feel that way about me?”

“Yeah.”

“I feel the same way about you,” Jenny admitted. “I didn’t want to tell you. I thought I’d scare you off.”

Mandy laughed bitterly. “Well, you scared me off either way.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I’m scared of an eternity of loving you without ever getting to touch you.”

“Oh.”

“Or take you places,” Mandy added. “Or show you off to my family. Or have a family of our own. Or grow old with you. Or any of the things we don’t get to do now that we’re dead.” Mandy threw up her arms. “This whole thing just sucks.”

“...Yeah.”

They watched the sky grow black and let the darkness cover them. Watching the day and night switch places was one of the few ways they could feel like they were moving forward.

“Mandy?” Jenny finally said.

“Yeah?”

“We’re still friends, right?”

“Duh.”

Jenny smiled. “Good…”

“What about the rest?” Mandy asked.

“I guess we can figure that out when we get to it.”

 

**2043**

Seeing so many former Samwell hockey players back in the Haus made Jenny feel like all her children were back home. Some of them stayed the night, which gave her the chance to write one last message to Ransom:

“ _We’re sorry we scared you so much!! xoxo_ ”

Ransom was terrified.

“You know, Adam,” he said the next day, holding Holster’s hand and standing a safe distance away from the old house, “I’m sad they’re tearing the Haus down, I really am, but it’s time for it to go. I swear to you, it’s haunted.”

“Sure, babe,” Holster replied, placing a kiss on Ransom’s temple.

Jenny followed Mandy as they floated around and took attendance. It was so strange for them to see the generations of hockey players they’d watched over now that they were full-blown adults. It struck Jenny that, for the last four decades, she’d hardly seen anyone who was past their 20’s. 

“They grow up so fast,” Mandy lamented, floating circles around a couple Jenny recognized.

“Oh, wow! It seems like just yesterday I stuck their dibs flip coin in the floorboards…” Jenny chuckled. “I can’t believe they haven’t killed each other yet.”

“I wish they had. We’d have had more ghost buds.”

A voice at the front of the crowd, speaking through a megaphone, drew everyone’s attention. “Okay, y’all! The demolition crew is ready. Count down with me?”

The crowd cheered. Mandy and Jenny counted down with the rest of them.

“10… 9… 8…”

Jenny kept her eyes on Mandy as she watched the Haus. Neither of them had talked about it much, but they both hoped the demolition would change something for them.

“7… 6… 5…”

The couples around them held each other tight. Jenny was envious.

“4… 3… 2…”

It didn’t mean anything, but Jenny still felt the urge to hold her breath.

“...1!”

The bulldozer crashed into the front of the building. The whole thing took, for the living, an alarmingly short time to fall apart.

“We stayed in that thing for two whole years,” Jenny heard someone mutter. She had to laugh.

-o0o-

When the celebration fizzled out and everyone left for their respective homes or hotels, Mandy and Jenny floated in the front yard, studying the street before them. 

“I know you want to try it,” Jenny said softly. “You should go ahead.”

“But what if…” Mandy trailed off.

“We’ll figure it out, just like we always do.”

Mandy smiled at her. “I love you, you know.”

“I love you, too.” Jenny gestured toward the street. “Now, go!”

Mandy took a deep breath. She raised only her arm to the invisible barrier, and where they expected her to stop, the tips of her fingers disappeared. She kept going until her entire forearm had vanished.

“Oh my God, Jenny,” she whispered. Tears began to roll down her face. “Oh my God.”

“What is it? Are you hurt?”

“No! No, Jen, it feels… warm. I can’t believe how long it’s been since I actually felt, like, _warm._ ”

“Can you get out?”

“I don’t want to get out.”

“We should know,” Jenny urged. “We should know if we can’t come back.”

Reluctantly, Mandy leaned back. Her arm stayed in place.

“You want to keep going?” Jenny asked.

Mandy nodded furiously. “It’s so nice, Jen.”

“Then go,” Jenny said. “I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

She couldn’t remember seeing Mandy smile so bright since that day in softball practice fifty years ago. “I love you so much, Jenny.”

“I love you, Mands. I’ll be right behind you.”

Mandy looked back for just a moment longer. Then she pushed on past the barrier. Jenny thought she could hear her laughing as she disappeared.

Then she joined her.

**Author's Note:**

> Come reblog this work and view others from this fest [HERE](https://omgcpheartbreakfest.tumblr.com/) on the omgcpheartbreakfest tumblr page!


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